ZIMBABWE: President Robert Mugabe sent a mixed signal to Zimbabwe's embattled white farmers yesterday, vowing to press ahead with controversial land seizures but promising that no "loyal" farmer would be left landless, reports Declan Walsh from Zimbabwe.
"We set ourselves an August deadline for the redistribution of land and that deadline stands," he told a large crowd at Heroes' Acre, a commemoration site for black liberation fighters.
"We, the principled people of Zimbabwe, we shall not be deterred on this one vital issue - the land." The news dismayed over 1,700 farmers who have remained on their farms since last weekend despite government threats of eviction. However, Mr Mugabe also offered a slender hope.
His policy of "one farmer, one farm" meant that all "genuine and well meaning white farmers who wish to pursue a farming career as loyal citizens of this country will have land to do so". The farmers' group Justice for Agriculture (JAG), said a third of the 2,900 farmers listed for eviction own just one farm. Spokeswoman Ms Jenni Williams said the group would continue to contest the evictions through the courts.
Ordinary farmers' reactions ranged from confusion to cynicism. "There are so many contradictions," said Mr Andy Kockett, a tobacco grower from Karoi. "I'm a single farmer but I've been told to get off my farm." Mr Bruce Gemmill from Virginia, 90 km east of Harare, said the speech was "meaningless rhetoric, for the consumption of the media and gullible diplomats". There were no evictions by yesterday evening, although according to early reports police had surrounded two farms.
There is apparently a second leg to President Mugabe's strategy. Since the weekend his lawyers have been offering individual farmers to right to stay on 400 hectares of land in exchange for the rights to the remainder.
JAG is against the deal. "People are making those agreements under duress. It's not clear whether they will stand up in court," said Ms Williams.
Mr Mugabe also used the speech to acknowledge Zimbabwe's looming food crisis. Aid agencies say half of the country's 12.5 million people face starvation, largely due to chaotic land reforms. "We shall ensure that no Zimbabwean starves to death," he pledged.
Addressing allegations that the Grain Marketing Board - the government agency controlling distribution of the staple food, maize - was discriminating against supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), he said: "We shall feed all, even the stooges and puppets will have enough. We do not discriminate."
Yesterday the MDC estimated the land policy had cost 70,000 black farmworkers their jobs and affected 250,000 dependants.
"Mugabe's fast-track land resettlement programme is not only defined by its illegality and its violence, but also by its crude short-sightedness and political opportunism," it said.
President Mugabe also hit out against the European Union for imposing sanction on him, his wife and 70 other senior Zimbabwean officials. He promised a "comprehensive response" to the measures.
In a familiar verbal salvo, President Mugabe railed against "rapacious supremacists, those who want to govern for the British Empire". Other European countries were "being sheepishly dragged along by the gangster of No. 10 Downing Street".
However, even President Mugabe has not managed to purge Zimbabwe entirely of its British heritage. The speech also marked the funeral of Bernard Chidzero, a former finance minister. As his coffin was lowered the army brass band played the Last Post, a British military air once used to honour fallen colonial soldiers.